Posted on 01/02/2006 3:28:43 AM PST by Liz
I really should read the whole thing before I comment! LOL! Woooops!
"...MLK's extramarital affairs, and his timing for telling Coretta about it."
Yeah, kinda' reminds one of Neut, doesn't it? :("
Yes, and now we shall see if the Lib/Left uses it as an example of MLK's heartlessness as they have done with Newt. But don't count on it.
LOL----good one.
There is much to admire about Dr. King. It would not be inaccurate to say that he may have been the "indispensable man" of the civil rights movement. But ANY historical figure MUST be subjected to the sort of legitimate analysis that is critical to establishing contextand perspective. For instance, it is my opinion that the greatest political philosophers of liberty in the history of mankind were those men that this nation was blessed to have at its inception, the Founding Fathers. Notwithstanding this opinion, I am constantly being exhorted by leftist deconstructionists to never forget that many of them were slaveowners, sexist, and slaughterers of innocent Indians. None of this changes the totality of my opinion of them in the great good they accomplished by founding this nation.
I simply say that a similar yardstick should be applied to Martin Luther King in assesing the impact that his legacy has on the modern-day civil rights movement.
A new factor has been introduced into modern-day discourse and that is what has become the intellectual scouge of our time, political correctness. This leftist attempt to stifle honest intellectual inquiry does serve to obsfucate and shield those counterproductive aspects of Martin Luther King's legacy and so prevent us from seeing what we need to retain and to reject of it, so that we might move forward to a full realization of the blessings of liberty that this great nation offers for all of its citizens.
The fact is that MLK WAS a socialist and that goes to the heart of what went wrong with the civil rights establishment after the legal battles against codified discrimination were won.
I am a black man who has been getting callouses on my dome from butting heads with those in my community who refuse to relinquish big government statist solutions for the problems plaquing the black community in favor of free market solutions that are far more appropriate today. These forces frequently cite Dr. King and use his exhortations to government to lead the way. They specifically cite his socialist outlook as justification for their continuance.
King himself expresses a communist outlook in his book "Stride Toward Freedom" when he stated, "in spite of the shortcomings of his analysis, Marx had raised some basic questions. I was deeply concerned from my early teen days about the gulf between superfluous wealth and abject poverty, and my reading of Marx made me even more conscious of this gulf. Although modern American capitalism has greatly reduced the gap through social reforms, there was still need for a better distribution of wealth. Moreover, Marx had revealed the danger of the profit motive as the sole basis of an economic system"
King, unfortunately, didn't understand that it was Capitalism and freedom that was responsible for the successes the African-American community already had achieved in his day and the key to future success. By "better distribution of wealth" King meant state control over the economy. His contempt for "the profit motive" was unfortunate given that African-Americans should've been encouraged by their leaders to seek fair profit to the best of their ability. King's leftist ideas contributed to an opening of the floodgates to such radicals as Stokley Carmichael, H. Rap Brown, the Black Panthers, as well as the burning and looting of African-American neighborhoods, the institutionalizing of poverty perpetrating welfare, the destruction of the family, drugs, violence, racism, and crime.
In "Stride Toward Freedom" Dr. King states "In short, I read Marx as I read all of the influential historical thinkers from a dialectical point of view, combining a partial yea and a partial no. My readings of Marx convinced me that truth is found neither in Marxism nor in traditional capitalism. Each represents a partial truth. Historically capitalism failed to see truth in collective enterprise and Marxism failed to see the truth in individual enterprise. The Kingdom of G-d is neither the thesis of individual enterprise nor the antithesis of collective enterprise, but a synthesis which reconciles the truths of both."
King, like Marx, Lenin, and Stalin, had "a dialectical point of view." The goal of the dialectic is authoritarianism. A nation, to paraphrase Abraham Lincoln, cannot be half free and half slave. By advocating socialism, King chose an imperious stand toward his own people in contrast to a stand for genuine freedom, self-rule, self-sufficiency, private ownership, and the accumulation of capital. King did not advocate the American system of free market capitalism. Instead, he stood for a system that has stunted the growth of African-Americans as well as the rest of us.
All Marxists believe in Hegelian Dialectics. This is a belief that "progress" is achieved through conflict between opposing viewpoints. Any ideological assertion (thesis) will create its own opposite (antithesis). Progress is achieved when a conclusion (synthesis) is reached which espouses aspects of both the thesis and antithesis.
For example, Hitler had a dialectical point of view. He rejected Marxist class warfare, but embraced the basic socialist idea of the insignificance of the individual compared to the collective state.
MLK was a man of enormous charisma and courage and certainly a pivotal figure in the civil rights movement. There is much about him that I admire. An assesment of his life could creditably yield the adjective of great. Despite that, he does not deserve to be the ONLY American with his own holiday named after him. That honor should be reserved for only one person in American history, the greatest of all Americans, George Washington. More so than any other SINGLE figure in our history, he was the "indispensable man." Without his courage, acumen,honor, and integrity, the US would simply not exist, and if it did, it probably would have been as a monarchy and certainly not as a constitutional republic.
MLK's birthday was a sop to PC and a reflection of the DemocRAT Congress that voted it. The depth of MLK's association with the most anti-freedom ideology (Communism)of our time will prove to very embarrassing when it is fully revealed. Additionally, MLK's legacy to the modern day civil rights movement is a socialist bequeathment, that of looking to big government solutions for many of the behavioral problems in today's black community. MLK continues to cast a long shadow over most of the modern day civil rights establishment and black politicians who largely reject free market, educationally based solutions to the unique problems plaguing the black community.
that is a well written and cogent piece Frank....far better than I could say but about covers everything.
and right you are....all others rank below Washingotn.
Ah, the arbiter of what people give a crap about. Thank you!
susie
A (wo)man (who) cheats on his wife her husband would do anything.
Fixed for balance...
After King's murder, the SCLC chose Dr. Ralph Abernathy as King's successor. In 1971 Jackson broke with the SCLC and left Operation Breadbasket. The circumstances that led to his departure were as follows: A black Chicago Tribune reporter named Angela Parker did some research and discovered that, following King's assassination, Jackson had embezzled money from Operation Breadbasket. Parker went to Atlanta and presented the evidence to Abernathy, who publicly confronted Jackson with the charges. When Abernathy suspended Jackson for sixty days, a raging Jackson decided to break away and establish his own organization called Operation PUSH (acronym for People United to Save Humanity).
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